1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to data security and more specifically to hiding or obfuscating data via pseudo-random polymorphic trees.
2. Introduction
Many computational situations involve sensitive, private, or otherwise critical data. Some examples of such critical data include cryptographic keys, digital rights management (DRM) keys, certain constant values which should remain secret, and so on. Often this data is shared with different devices as part of an encryption, authentication, or distribution scheme. However, existing encryption-based approaches to protecting distribution of these types of critical information often incorporate known weaknesses or can be exploited, given enough time, using well-known methodologies. Further, once the protection has been ‘cracked’, attackers only need to extract the key and apply the key to encrypted data.
Another approach to protecting data can be to hide where the data is in the first place. Certain encryption schemes generate recognizable data patterns that an attacker can recognize. Thus, one way to further enhance the secrecy or restrict access to critical data is to ‘hide’ it so that an attacker is unable to determine where the data is or even that critical data is stored at all.